1. Daniel J. Pintar UOP (Presenter)
AIChE Pilot Plant Benchmarking Study Environmental Health & Safety Section
Daniel J. Pintar UOP (Presenter)

2. Benchmarking Team Members
Current Team
Bob Duggal, Afton Chemical
Rich Palluzi, ExxonMobil
Dan Pintar, UOP
Joe Powell, Shell
David Edwards, Zeton
Sean Murray, Zeton
Previous members
Shiah Cherney, ChevronTexaco
Paul McKenzie, BMS
Kate Threefoot, DuPont

3. Sub-Industry Within the CPI
Type #
Speciality Chemical 16
Commodity Chemical 4
Pharmaceutical 7
Oil & Gas

4. Pilot Plant Safety: Survey Results

5. Does your company have a formal safety program?
100% of responding companies answer YES!

6. What type safety program do you have?

7. What type of safety metrics does your company use?

8. Employee Safety Incentive Program

9. Safety Record – Injuries, OSHA, Lost Work Case Rates2 4 6 8 10 12 14
<1 1
Number of Respondents

10. Emergency Response Team

11. How do you review new processes for EH&S?

12. Safety Review Process to Control Changes to Pilot Plant

13. How do you document changes to pilot plant?

14. Do you allow unattended operations of pilot plants?

15. If you allow unattended operations, what type of safety review process is used for these types of units and are their any special safety interlocks or safety requirements?
9 responses to this question
Comments…..
We allow, but currently the vast majority would be more correctly classified as “Minimally Attended Operations”
Procedure defines operations that can be run unattended - stirring reactions, distillations with no over-distilling hazards, etc
Detailed hazard and risk analysis including safety shutdown system design and operation
Full management of change (MOC) process and training; risk analysis required.
Automatic shutdown
Alarms to alert staff on site or in the area
A risk assessment process, but this is only the case for fully automated continuous unit
PHA
No special safety interlocks – only past history/records
Formal review with safety staff and engineering staff. Pilot plant specific safety interlocks are required for unattended operation
No unattended operations

16. ~30 responses were received
What have been the biggest changes in the areas of pilot plant safety over the last decade for your organization?
~30 responses were received
A common theme was the advent of more “formalized” safety programs. Examples:
Formal safety reviews/PHA (8 comments)
Change Management – MOC (4 comments)
Formal safety training (4 comments)
PSM/Scale/Scope of Work (3 comments)
More formalized safety program guidelines/corporate requirements (2 comments)
Increased use of automation/alarms/interlocks was a common theme (4 comments)

17. What have been the biggest changes in the areas of pilot plant safety over the last decade for your organization?
Some others comments:
Catch tank installation for containment of runaway reaction effluent
Formal thermochemistry review process for every batch made in the pilot plant
Solids handling/exposure
Increasing amount of HSE regulations we need to comply with that historically seemed to only apply to larger manufacturing sites
The scale of the experiments has increased. Thus the chance of a serious incident is greater due to an increase in magnitude
We have modified our safety procedures to more closely handle pilot plants as continuous operating laboratory units.
Instituted a Safety Relief Valve database

18. What are some of the drivers of the changes in safety programs?
Increasing amount of regulations/compliance requirements is an obvious driver of these changes
Safety performance is a measure of corporate performance and is factored into strategic plans
The goal of 0 injuries, 0 environmental incidents
Social aspects that help drive these changes
“Sustainable Development”
Being a good corporate citizen
Emphasis on “Safety is Job#1”

19. What other issues associated with "Pilot Plant Safety" are of significance to your organization, and would be of interest to you in future benchmarking studies?
Safety staffing - dedicated safety staff (of FTE) per operator/technician and per pilot unit
Types of review procedures:
Pre-start up safety analysis
Types of safety review systems
Chemical review along with an equipment operation review.
Automation/safety system related:
Safety shutdown implementation philosophy.
Unattended/minimal operation. Remote monitoring from main plant control rooms for safety issues as backup to unattended operation
Personnel Safety
Solids handling
Handling Extremely hazardous chemicals
Monitoring adherence to operating procedures (requires routinely auditing of operators as they perform their jobs).
Industrial Hygiene Monitoring of new processes.
People from other organizations working in the pilot plants.
Area electrical classification philosophy

20. What other issues associated with "Pilot Plant Safety" are of significance to your organization, and would be of interest to you in future benchmarking studies? Continued…
Pilot Plant versus Prudent Lab versus Manufacturing Facility standards
Managing a Pilot Plant within a Manufacturing Facility with different standards. What control should Manufacturing have over how a pilot plant operates?
Managing between Pilot Plant and Prudent Lab
The degree to which commercial process MOC concepts should apply to smaller scale R&D pilot plants
Statistics/Metrics
Incident Reports, including Near Miss reporting
Current Safety statistics
Root cause analysis for all Safety Incidents/Injuries/Accidents
Corrective actions completion % & response time
Current training and training tracking
Reliability